Kids…What an Imagination.

Why is it so hard to look at the rational side of things? This is something that boggles my mind, to the point where I literally give myself a headache. I am part of a paranormal based message board where there was a thread about a 2 year old child. The mother came to the message board frantic because her 2 year old would come into her room crying at night saying that “the guy” was there. Actually I will paste the exact post.

Hello – I’m new, but in need of some help here.

My 2 year old daughter has been coming into my room in the early morning – for 2 weeks now, hysterically crying pointing at my window saying “the guy’s here”. Right around the same time, I started having horrible dreams at night – waking up feeling as if I never even slept.

Back story – we live in a duplex. There was a suicide in the connecting duplex in 2005 – we’ll call him “J”. It happened in the bedroom – which is opposite our bedroom wall. “J” was a friend of the family, and we have MANY, MANY mutual friends.

I’ve been telling friends that I need a picture of “J” to show my daughter to see if it’s him or not. Sunday morning I finally got my hands on a picture – brought it home and showed my daughter. All questions were open ended so she wouldn’t base her answer on me feeding it to her. I asked her who the boy in the picture was & she replied “the guy”. I asked her to show me where he lived – she took me to my room, pointing to the same spot she has since this all started. I asked her where he slept, she answered “your bed”. Fast forward to Sunday afternoon – we were in my room doing laundry – my daughter looks out the window and says “the guys home!!!”. I’ve been sick to my stomach ever since, and I believe her.

Is there anything I can do? Could “J” be trapped here due to the suicide (which was extremely traumatic). Should I have the house cleansed? I’m really just at a loss here… and I’m worried about my little girl. My 3 year old son hasn’t seen or said a thing, so I’m assuming it’s just her that sees all of this (she also sees him outside – comes in the house frantically crying that he’s out there).

The thing that doesn’t make sense to me is why does the child wake up and walk into her mother’s room to tell her that “the guy” is in there? To me this is nothing but an over active imagination. Notice the other child and the mother are not seeing “the guy” and that backs up my feeling that this is nothing but imagination even more.

The mother is using subjective validation, her 2 year old is crying saying “the guy” so she starts making sense of it by attributing her weird feelings, horrible dreams and awkward sleeping pattern to it. She even takes it a step further by assuming that a suicide in the house is the root cause of all of this, and why? I believe the reason to be because the mother unintentionally primed her daughter, by showing her a photo of the suicide victim.

We only have an anecdotal account here, the mother says she only asked open ended questions, but we don’t really know that to be a fact. She could have been overheard talking to other people about this photograph and what not. And the name “the guy” isn’t that uncommon, a little cool fact, my own 2 year old daughter calls everyone she doesn’t know “the guy.” For a year Jason Korbus, my co-host of Strange Frequencies Radio was always called “the guy,” by my daughter Myla. My point is, it isn’t that strange.

Another thing about this thread is that a person decided to chime in by saying:

Poor child.. I doubt it is her imagination.. she is only 2 and at 2- they don’t seem to have much of an imagination… Their imagination kicks in at the age of 4 onwards.. I know this..I have a 5yr old now that never said much at the age of 2… yet come 4 years old she started to make things up.. play pretend… still does… but at the age of just 2 – they are not that imaginative.. meaning they don’t go around making just about anything up… I think their little minds are only in the early stages of growth… You will notice once your kid reaches 4 onwards the imagination will get into action..

This is just simply not true whatsoever. My daughter is a 2 year old and she tells me the most amazing stories I have ever heard, I have no idea where she gets them from…yes I do, her imagination. My only assumption is, is that this poster also had a 2 year old who’s imagination didn’t run wild or so she thought, till the age of 4. So instead of assuming my daughter is brilliantly smart (which she is) I decided to contact and child psychologist and see what they had to say.

I sent an email basically saying the same story that the original poster said about my daughter talking to “the guy” and mixed in what the second person said about imagination not getting a jumpstart till the age of 4. I really wish I could have copy and pasted it here for you all to read, however it was one of those submit a comment deals instead of a real email. Yet within a matter of a couple hours I received a response.

Unfortunately, we cannot give advice without seeing your child. I would
consult with your pediatrician with any concerns.
That being said, from my experience, an active imagination is perfectly
normal.

So although a diagnosis couldn’t be given online and through email (which I knew ahead of time) the one thing that stuck out to me the most was the last line – That being said, from my experience, an active imagination is perfectly normal.

IMO I think this whole thing can be chalked up to an overactive imagination and my advice would be to simply ignore “the guy” and he will probably vanish (no pun intended) within a couple days.

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About Bobby the Paranormal SkepticBobby Nelson is a skeptic, writer, and co-host of Strange Frequencies Radio. His personal blog can be found online at www.porkrhine.com
At one time, Bobby was what could be called a "true believer" in paranormal phenomenon. Having been an active investigator of the paranormal for 12 years with several different Toledo based teams, he has examined countless claims of activity. But years worth of research and investigation proved to him that the evidence for these claims are generally lacking and, furthermore, the vast majority of so-called scientific paranormal investigators were using improper methodologies which caused them to draw both false and misleading conclusions.

2 Responses to Kids…What an Imagination.

From the time that I could talk my parents laughed at me because I had an imaginary friend. They even have pictures of me and my friend playing together.
I also was a very well behaved child since anytime something was bad it was my ‘friend’ that did it, not me.
; )
Kids, even at 2 have great imaginations. My son would build “mud worlds” in the yard. Look at little kid’s toys, they all leave so much room for the child to create with.
This child could just be imagining the guy. It could be a simple extention of the dream state that the child is now expanding on since she probably received attention for metioning this.
Or….
Since this “guy” was a neighbor and a friend to the family his tragic suicide would have caused a disruption in the household. The adults would have had many conversations about the death. The child probably would have at least know this man by sight. Not understanding death, the fact that his death was probably whispered about rather than spoken of, this could be a coping mechanism for the child.

I think the mom needs to face her fears and feelings about that suicide.